Architecture and Public Policy

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CIS explores how changes in the architecture of computer networks affect the economic environment for innovation and competition on the Internet, and how the law should react to those changes. This work has lead us to analyze the issue of network neutrality, perhaps the Internet's most debated policy issue, which concerns Internet user's ability to access the content and software of their choice without interference from network providers.

Charles Belle is the founder and Executive Director of Startup Policy Lab, a new nonprofit think tank dedicated to connecting policymakers and the startup community. Examining public policy at the nexus of startups and technology, Charles' research is currently focused on privacy and how to support local government open data initiatives while simultaneously protecting citizen privacy.

Brett Frischmann joins Villanova as The Charles Widger Endowed University Professor in Law, Business and Economics, effective August 1, 2017. In this new role, Professor Frischmann will promote cross-campus research, programming and collaboration; foster high-visibility academic pursuits at the national and international levels; have the ability to teach across the University; and position Villanova as a thought leader and innovator at the intersection of law, business and economics.

Valarie Kaur is a Non-Residential Fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. She is a lawyer, documentary filmmaker, and interfaith organizer who helps communities tell their stories and organize for social change. She has made award-winning films and led multimedia campaigns on civil rights issues: hate crimes, racial profiling, gun violence, marriage equality, immigration detention, and solitary confinement.

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Since 9/11 the spectre of 'terrorism' and the ethos of what I term 'Everwar' and the permanent state of national emergency have permeated the Congressional and national political agendas. Over the years, starting with the USA 'PATRIOT' Act rushed to passage in October 2001, a variety of legal, procedural and technical tools, processes, and interpretations -- some quite controversial -- were enacted or accepted in order to "protect the homeland" from the allegedly existential threat of terrorism.

Today's vote is among the greatest public interest victories in U.S. history. The FCC's strong rules banning blocking, throttling and paid prioritization will help protect innovation, economic growth, and democratic discourse in America.

This Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is poised to reclassify ISPs like Verizon and Comcast that connect us to the Internet as common carriers and adopt strong net neutrality rules to protect users, innovation, and free speech online. This is great news.

From Tuesday on, passengers traveling to the U.S. from 10 airports in eight Muslim-majority countries will not be allowed to have iPads, laptops or any communications device larger than a smartphone in the cabin of the plane.

Over the past two months, millions of people have taken to the streets to challenge our nation’s authoritarian new president.

From the women’s marches that took place across the country and around the world to the mass protests against the Muslim ban and immigration raids, people are resisting the neo-fascist agenda President Trump is unleashing on our nation.

A primary reason why millions have been able to mobilize so quickly is because they have the ability to use the open internet to communicate to the masses and organize a resistance.

Abstract

Though scholars have identified the expanding scope of First Amendment speech doctrine, little attention has been paid to the theoretical transformation happening inside the doctrine that has accompanied its outward creep. Taking up this overlooked perspective, this Article uncovers a new speech theory: the libertarian tradition. This new tradition both is generative of the doctrine’s expansion and risks undermining the First Amendment’s theoretical foundations.

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Comcast Corp. v. FCC is a 2010 United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia case holding that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does not have ancillary jurisdiction over Comcast’s Internet service under the language of the Communications Act of 1934. In so holding, the Court vacated a 2008 order issued by the FCC that asserted jurisdiction over Comcast’s network management polices and censured Comcast from interfering with its subscribers' use of peer-to-peer software.

In 2005, on the same day the FCC re-classified DSL service and effectively reduced the regulatory obligations of DSL providers, the FCC announced its unanimous view that consumers are entitled to certain rights and expectations with respect to their broadband service, including the right to:

""The vote to repeal net neutrality is easily the most unpopular decision the FCC has ever made," said Malkia Cyril, a civil rights activist and director of the Center for Media Justice, in an email to Truthout. "The level of corruption and outright disdain for democracy shown by the Republican members of the FCC has been atrocious.""

"Ryan Singel, a fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society and a former reporter at Wired, agrees that it’s hard to imagine the Googles and Facebooks of the world doing things differently after net neutrality’s repeal. “These guys can afford to pay for fast lanes”—the priority treatment that ISPs will soon be permitted to charge for—“they can afford to pay access fees, they have the clout to make sure that when they do pay for those, that they get a better rate than someone else,” Singel says."

"Even if Fort Collins’s network succeeds, it’s not likely to send Comcast scrambling to revamp the way it treats customers or content. The future of the free and open internet will remain in question for the vast majority of the country’s online users. But ISPs have been shamed into user-friendly practices before—Google Fiber’s splashy rollout a few years ago had the knock-on effect of scaring giants like AT&T into building more gigabit fiber networks in major markets.

"Pai maintains that his proposal is a standard rollback in government regulation that gives ISPs more freedom for things like infrastructure investments. But critics argue that this would result in fast and slow lanes for internet access and could lead to favoritism and the entrenchment of wealthy players. In other words, nothing could stop AT&T from slowing down Netflix in an effort to prioritize its own cable TV package, or outright blocking a website that’s critical of its business practices.

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The Internet Ecosystem is made up of a number of organizations and processes that shape the coordination and management of the global Internet and enable its overall functioning. These organizations include: technology and engineering organizations, network operators, resource management organizations, users, educators and policy-makers. These organizations have demonstrated, established roles in administering the Internet’s technical infrastructure.

For tech-savvy Silicon Valley, there is nothing more important than a free and open Internet. Yet recent reports of cyberattacks against top-tier enterprises demonstrate a need for increased vigilance in defending the networks that launched the Digital Age.

The program committee for We Robot: Getting Down To Business invites you to join us for the second annual robotics and the law conference to take place April 8 and 9 at Stanford Law School. This year’s event is focused on the immediate commercial prospects of robotics and will include panels and papers on a wide variety of topics, including:

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Valarie Kaur, founder of Groundswell, gave this moving address on Revolutionary Love at the world's largest interfaith gathering – the 2015 Parliament of the World's Religions. Don't miss the message our world needs to hear – "Forgiveness is not forgetting, forgiveness is freedom from hate."

From the First Amendment to net neutrality, How does media regulation affect what we say? The Sixth Annual Rebele Symposium addressed this topic with Mignon Clyburn, Victor Pickard, and Morgan Weiland. Ted Glasser and Christine Larson moderated the event.

Abstract: Behind the hype and tumult of the markets, researchers have been quietly producing a series of exciting results about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. In this paper we’ll explain why computer scientists should pay attention to these developments.

When the FCC announced recently that it would adopt new regulations for the Internet – regulations commonly known as Net Neutrality – the announcement was widely cheered by champions of free speech and denigrated by those who feared this was government overreach. One columnist went so far as to say that Net Neutrality would let the government monitor religious leaders and their communications.